Each year, recreational boating accidents cause hundreds of fatalities and thousands of injuries nationwide, according to U.S. Coast Guard data. These are vessels are often big enough for a family to spend anywhere from a few days to a few weeks on the water, but are too small to hire a crew, or even a junior captain. These circumstances require a captain to keep constant vigil over the boat, raising the likelihood of human error due to fatigue, distraction, or attention lapses.
Human error frequently leads to maritime accidents both at sea and near ports even with an experienced captain and crew. For example, when the Costa Concordia hit a rock near Tuscany, Italy, and dipped into the Mediterranean in 2012, people around the world wondered how the captain of a cruise ship carrying 4,229 people could have made such a simple yet fatal miscalculation. Altogether, 32 passengers died. Early on 17 Jun. 2017, the United States Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with MV ACX Crystal, a Philippine-flagged container ship, about 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) southeast of the city of Shimoda on the Japanese mainland (Honshu). The accident killed seven Fitzgerald sailors.
Similar to airplanes, many vessels have an autopilot option. These systems typically rely on GPS or similar satellite-based localization systems, a digital compass, and a digital nautical chart to navigate. Such systems have no way of detecting any vessels, debris or other dynamic nautical features that are not marked on their nautical charts. In other words, they lack both the hardware and the software to build a real-time map of their surroundings. These systems also are reactive, meaning that they respond only after the boat senses a change in tide, wind, heading, or other conditions. This is similar to cruise control on an automobile. They do not predict the trajectory of other nautical objects in their vicinity and execute preemptive maneuvers to avoid a collision.
Predictive, rather than reactive, self-driving boat technology has been used by militaries in the United States and abroad. The Pentagon has recently unveiled a self-driving 132-foot ship, the Sea Hunter, which is able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own, searching for underwater mines and submarines. BAE Systems recently tested a self-driving boat technology that can be fitted to smaller Rigid Inflatable Boats. The Royal British Navy is already employing similar technology. However, self-driving boat technology requires real-time, accurate data regarding the boat's position, orientation, and environment to generate safe and efficient navigation paths.
Accordingly, there is a long-felt need for a sensor system capable of collecting and processing real-time data for use in predictive navigational systems for self-driving maritime vessels.